The Earl’s Timely Wallflower

The Earl’s Timely Wallflower Taken by Destiny, Book 1 By Aurrora St. James © Copyright 2023 by Aurrora St. James Text by Aurrora St. James Cover by Dar Albert Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc. P.O. Box 23 Moreno Valley, CA 92556 [email protected] Produced in the United States of America First Edition March 2023 Kindle Edition Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation to advertising or promotion is strictly prohibited. All Rights Reserved. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author. License Notes: This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook, once purchased, may not be re-sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or borrow it, or it was not purchased for you and given as a gift for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. If this book was purchased on an unauthorized platform, then it is a pirated and/or unauthorized copy and violators will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Do not purchase or accept pirated copies. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work. For subsidiary rights, contact Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. ARE YOU SIGNED UP FOR DRAGONBLADE’S BLOG? You’ll get the latest news and information on exclusive giveaways, exclusive excerpts, coming releases, sales, free books, cover reveals and more. Check out our complete list of authors, too! No spam, no junk. That’s a promise! Sign Up Here * Dearest Reader; Thank you for your support of a small press. At Dragonblade Publishing, we strive to bring you the highest quality Historical Romance from some of the best authors in the business. Without your support, there is no ‘us’, so we sincerely hope you adore these stories and find some new favorite authors along the way. Happy Reading! CEO, Dragonblade Publishing Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Publisher’s Note Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen About the Author Chapter One Present Day Kentucky The bright jingle of the shop bell rang out as the last customers left, each with a small bag of books. Lily Bennett waved and smiled until they were out of sight and then breathed out a sigh of relief. After three years of moving around, she’d been so certain that this was the place where she could feel at home, but as the late afternoon sun shone through the windows, lighting up the floating dust moats, Lily second-guessed herself. Again. Bookhalla was a small, dusty bookstore filled to the ceiling with books new and old. Bright gold lettering on the front window beckoned to people browsing the small shops on Main Street. Stained wainscoting lined the lower walls with a muted green paint above, and stuffed club chairs invited guests to linger, read, and breathe in the comfortable scents of old paper and leather. With Lily’s love of books, it should have been her dream job. Instead, it did little more than pay the rent on the ratty apartment that her landlord thought was a mansion. It certainly hadn’t settled the restlessness that continually stirred in her chest. Corbin Kentucky and Bookhalla were supposed to fill that void, not crack it open wider. She pushed away the pang of odd emotion and sat at the mahogany monstrosity that her boss called a desk. Cranks raised the desk top up and down to different heights, tilted a section into a drafters table, or raised a bank of drawers in the back that were otherwise hidden. It had more gears than her watch. Somehow, it suited Mr. Samuel perfectly, like his own personal Frankenstein. Lily retrieved her cell phone from the purse that she’d stashed beneath the desk. Her belly fluttered as she turned it on. Despite her misgivings about Corbin, she’d mustered her courage, and the last of the money from the sale of her parents’ home and put in an offer on a three-bedroom cabin on the river. It would be a new place for her to call home. A place that felt like home. Hopefully, it would be one that Archer and Bellamy would come back to as well. They needed to be a family again. Her brother and sister were all she had left. She glanced at the glossy fashion magazine on the desk as she waited for the phone to start. Her little sister, Bellamy, graced the cover in a tiny, sapphire-blue Louis Vuitton bikini, splashing through clear aqua water in a tropical paradise. With long, blond hair, blue eyes, a willowy frame, and legs for miles, photographers practically salivated to book her. Lily pushed her glasses up on her nose. At five feet three, even though she had a decent hourglass figure and wavy, caramel-brown hair, she’d always been invisible next to her sister. Not that it mattered. Bellamy lived in New York now. The last man to pay any attention to Lily had constantly picked at the way she looked and how she dressed. He wanted a beautiful, elegant woman to hang on his arm at parties, not a nerdy wallflower who still didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up. A woman who found more excitement in her romance novels than she ever did in real life. He wanted a woman like Bellamy. Lily stuffed those thoughts away with all the others that kept her awake at night and tucked the magazine into her purse. She was proud of her sister for reaching her dreams. If a bit of envy tinged that pride, she ignored it. Just as she dismissed the pangs she